More saffron-fish weirdness. Also, this one seemed to take more time than usual. This was another of several dishes where Adriá combines fish, picada, and sofrito. Each time he’s done this the flavors are pretty weird — but not awful — probably authentic and I just don’t know it. I wish the recipes in this book were reliable enough to judge whether in places I just don’t like the cuisine.
For the soup you need two of the “building block” recipes called out in the front of the book. One of the first things here was to grab the sofrito, which I had ran out of doing a previous dish. I had to make it again, and have just a couple of observations: DO NOT be afraid of using 14 cups of onions in the 7 1/2 cup serving size — it reduces like crazy; and the bay leaf called out goes from 10 to 1/2 — when the serving size only goes down by roughly a third. I cut the serving size for 7 1/2 in half and everything worked out fine, and simply scaled down the bay leaf as well.
For the fish, using the serving for six, I used 1/2 pound of whole shrimp, half a pound of “seafood medley” (bits and pieces of clam, squid, crab, and so on), and one whole tilapia.
Errors: there was an apparent error in the garlic callout — It went from 1 oz (probably 6-8 cloves) for the serving for 20, to NINE cloves for the serving for six. I used four/five (and had to pull the green sprouts out of those, so it probably came out alright.) There was also an idiocy issue with the “anise flavored liquor” — it calls for “two dashes” in EIGHT cups of soup. I don’t know how potent ANY seasoning could be to accomplish anything in those proportions — except maybe ghost chiles. I couldn’t taste that component, and the pictures in the book show the cook adding a hell of a lot more than even what the serving for 75 called for… Hmmm….
Nothing much else to see here; I stubbed my toe on the bread and used four slices (small loaf), and just followed the pictures. It worked and tasted “interesting”. Odd.
For the second course, nothing to say. There’s no way to screw up frying mushrooms and sausage; all the proportions are right and it was very, very, good. Maybe want to serve that with some bread.
Dessert — another dirt-simple presentation that KILLED. The next time you’re in a pinch, just slice some citrus, anoint it with honey, oil, and salt — top with crushed hard caramels — and you’re home free.
Pretty good.
Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal — The Errata